12-Year-Old Moroccan Boy Alerts Residents, Saves German Apartment Building from Fire

12 years old and already a firefighter at heart. Laroussi was on his way to the supermarket with one of his friends when he saw smoke coming out of the stairwell of a building in the Forstfeld district. Without hesitation, the young Moroccan rushed into the building and climbed the stairs up to the fifth floor. When asked if he wasn’t afraid of the fire, he replies that the important thing was to prevent the worst from happening, even though he knew he was taking a great risk by rushing into this kind of building. "I was just afraid for my left hand because it had been fractured. I thought I might fall while climbing the stairs. But that didn’t happen," hna.de reports.

Arriving on the fifth floor, the Moroccan discovers that the source of the fire is an artificial flower vase. He rings the door of an apartment at random and calls for help. The woman who opened the door is delighted by the boy’s spontaneity. "Otherwise, something worse would have happened. He was really brave. You have to say that," she insists to the journalist who came to interview her about the narrowly averted tragedy.

The police called to the rescue only arrived an hour later to make the usual findings. Police spokesman Ulrike Schaake said the young boy’s gesture helped contain the extent of the damage. In his statement to the police, Larossi said he had encountered the two alleged arsonists in the stairwell. They would have left the building through the back door. When questioned by the police about his real motivations, the young boy replied that mutual aid and solidarity are part of the DNA of Moroccans.